SAFe Product Owner vs Scrum Product Owner -They Are Not the Same
The SAFe Product Owner doesn’t own the Product
The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) exists to “to enable the business agility that is required for enterprises to compete and thrive in the digital age.” — scaledagileframework.com/about. Organisations adopt SAFe to align multiple teams working on the same product. SAFe is one of many ways to scale.
A critical role within SAFe is the Product Owner. As in Scrum, the SAFe Product Owner is there to maximise the value of the Agile Team (SAFe equivalent of a Scrum Team).
This article will compare the Product Owner roles in both frameworks identify similarities and differences, to answer the question: is a SAFe Product Owner the same as the Scrum Product Owner?
TLDR; Different Roles
The SAFe Product Owner and the Scrum Product Owner are the same in name only. The Scrum Product Owner is the sole person responsible to maximise the value of the product. He/she owns the Product Backlog which lists all requirements for the product.
The SAFe Product Owner, however, owns the Team Backlog, listing all requirements for a team. On top of that, the Product Owner only serves a maximum of two teams. A SAFe Product Owner doesn’t have full…
